Fox ‘Stole’ a Game Clip, Used it in Family Guy & DMCA’d the Original

[JAKEBAB]

Surely someone at Fox is just trolling.

 

The Family Guy ep is pretty funny i'll admit.

[captain cactus]

Everybody talkin' shit about Fox here while YouTube themselves are also a big part of the problem. Look how easy it is for some dickheads to screw with the DMCA takedown notice. It's completely shit and needs a redesign from the ground up.

[ThinkWithPortals]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fox: They'll take your lunch, eat it and then accuse you of stealing theirs.

[Master Disaster]

Just to play devils advocate here, it very likely wasn't even fox who issued the claim. These large corporations hire other companies to handle DMCA claims on their behalf. Its likely this other company saw the footage and wrongly assumed the OP stole it from Fox and not the other way around.

[Misanthrope]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Just to play devils advocate here, it very likely wasn't even fox who issued the claim. These large corporations hire other companies to handle DMCA claims on their behalf. Its likely this other company saw the footage and wrongly assumed the OP stole it from Fox and not the other way around.

Irrelevant: if I hire someone to act on my behalf I am 100% accountable for their actions. The only way this could possibly be brought up is if the sweat shop of flaggers in Malasia or whatever it's immediately dismissed with prejudice and Fox publicly apologizes.

 

Of course they would hire another 3rd party firm (possibly the same one after they just switch fucking names) to do the same things. They know full well what they're doing by hiring this companies, don't give em plausible deniability because that's what they want and morally we most ignore it.

[Notional]

9 hours ago, Sparviero said:

I'm still waiting for the second season of Space: Above and Beyond.  Firefly.

 

FTFY.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Fox took footage from a Youtube vid

It was first uploaded in 2009

 

You're not talking your way out of this

I don't believe I ever disputed that fact, I simply pointed out that it MIGHT NOT have been fox who made the claim, in actuality they MIGHT have been totally unaware of the claim until the shit hit the fan. For all you know they might have been the ones who dropped the claim with YT after it was brought to their attention.

 

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Irrelevant: if I hire someone to act on my behalf I am 100% accountable for their actions. The only way this could possibly be brought up is if the sweat shop of flaggers in Malasia or whatever it's immediately dismissed with prejudice and Fox publicly apologizes.

 

Of course they would hire another 3rd party firm (possibly the same one after they just switch fucking names) to do the same things. They know full well what they're doing by hiring this companies, don't give em plausible deniability because that's what they want and morally we most ignore it.

Again I don't think I said anything which contradicts any of this. BTW your not responsible for the actions of someone you employ, that's the most idiotic thing I ever heard. If their actions are as a result of your instructions then you MIGHT get hit with a consiracy charge depending on the circumstances but ultimately the buck stops with the person who committed the act. If Luke went out during office hours and robbed a car you think the police would go and arrest Linus even if Linus told him to go do it? I think they'd tell Luke he is an adult and should be able to determine on his own that robbing a car is illegal.

[Misanthrope]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I don't believe I ever disputed that fact, I simply pointed out that it MIGHT NOT have been fox who made the claim, in actuality they MIGHT have been totally unaware of the claim until the shit hit the fan. For all you know they might have been the ones who dropped the claim with YT after it was brought to their attention.

 

Again I don't think I said anything which contradicts any of this. BTW your not responsible for the actions of someone you employ, that's the most idiotic thing I ever heard. If their actions are as a result of your instructions then you MIGHT get hit with a consiracy charge depending on the circumstances but ultimately the buck stops with the person who committed the act. If Luke went out during office hours and robbed a car you think the police would go and arrest Linus even if Linus told him to go do it? I think they'd tell Luke he is an adult and should be able to determine on his own that robbing a car is illegal.

That's not exactly what I mean, to illustrate:

1) I hire an office employee and he guns down a customer over an argument

2) I hire a lawyer with the explicit purpose of filing DMCA Claims on youtube then he does what I paid him for

 

If we're talking about 1) then of course I am not responsible for what my employee did. But we are not are we? We're talking about 2) here: Fox (probably) hires third party lawyers specifically to file DMCA claims on their behalf henceforth any monumental screw up like this means that it is absolutely their fault because I did a shit job of hiring a lousy employee and didn't clarify what was ok and what was not ok he was basically doing the exact function I pay him for. If that goes wrong, that's not on the employee that's on the company.  

 

So how are their actions not a results of their instructions?

[Bajantechnician]

hire the lawyers.

fox will lose, since the basketball clip was loaded in 2009

[minibois]

9 minutes ago, Bajantechnician said:

hire the lawyers.

fox will lose, since the basketball clip was loaded in 2009

inb4 they claim that clip was not copyrighted material and they will win because $$$

[GreezyJeezy]

21 hours ago, GeekJump said:

I would love if people do the same thing to Fox - just to screw with them.

 

Step 1. Unload Family Guy, American Dad, etc. clips to YouTube.

Step 2. Once uploaded, file take down claims against Fox's channels.

Step 3. Continue steps 1 & 2

 

Probably wont effect them much but it will annoy their digital media team >:)

that wont work considering on any streaming/video site if you try to upload a fox show it gets taken down before its even uploaded 

[ApolloFury]

He should sue them.

[apm]

i want an update of this.

they obviously cant go through with it.

 

they did restore the video, but is still fair use to use the clip in a commercial product?

do they still own the video or did they remove the claim?

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, apm said:

i want an update of this.

they obviously cant go through with it.

 

they did restore the video, but is still fair use to use the clip in a commercial product?

do they still own the video or did they remove the claim?

It would be if the original clip has any form of commentary. The rule of thumb is that its transformative in nature meaning that the original is changed or enhanced in such a way that it represents a new body of work. Most let's plays are usually covered unless they're ludicrously exhaustive in detail and length but most gamers usually pick and choose indie games and well, non-sociopathic companies to work their lets play content i.e. If you decide to do Witcher III you'll be fine, if you even mention Nintendo however the cunts will probably put a strike on you within days.

 

Historically people usually check with the original content creator (going all the way back to MST3K for example) but they actually shouldn't need to if fair use was well, fairly applied.

[LAwLz]

On 5/21/2016 at 11:34 AM, Master Disaster said:

Just to play devils advocate here, it very likely wasn't even fox who issued the claim. These large corporations hire other companies to handle DMCA claims on their behalf. Its likely this other company saw the footage and wrongly assumed the OP stole it from Fox and not the other way around.

I thought it was an automated process.

 

On 5/21/2016 at 10:34 AM, lots of unexplainable lag said:

Everybody talkin' shit about Fox here while YouTube themselves are also a big part of the problem. Look how easy it is for some dickheads to screw with the DMCA takedown notice. It's completely shit and needs a redesign from the ground up.

YouTube's system is terrible, but I can't think of any way to improve it (other than the things they are currently implementing). Google search is getting hit with about 85 million take down notices every month (from a mere 7000 different copyright owners). I suspect that YouTube is getting several millions a dag too. They are legally obligated to examine every one of them, and missing a single one can lead to them getting sued.

What needs to happen is reduce the number of take down notices getting sent, so that a more accurate system can get implemented. Something like a small fee if you send out a false DMCA take down would probably go a long way.

[WereCat]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I thought it was an automated process.

 

YouTube's system is terrible, but I can't think of any way to improve it (other than the things they are currently implementing). Google search is getting hit with about 85 million take down notices every month (from a mere 7000 different copyright owners). I suspect that YouTube is getting several millions a dag too. They are legally obligated to examine every one of them, and missing a single one can lead to them getting sued.

What needs to happen is reduce the number of take down notices getting sent, so that a more accurate system can get implemented. Something like a small fee if you send out a false DMCA take down would probably go a long way.

Fee for false DMCA may not be a bad idea but there sure would be other issues that would come with it.

For example someone claimed your content and you fill out DMCA but somehow the other party wins and you did not just lost your content but you also have to pay fee.

 

Would you fight for your content against huge corporation if there would be quite big chance you will lose and therefore you have to pay fee even if the content was truly yours?

These corporations couldn't care less about fee as that is nothing to them. They can afford it, you can't.

[Trixanity]

9 minutes ago, WereCat said:

These corporations couldn't care less about fee as that is nothing to them. They can afford it, you can't.

Easy way to fix that. Make the fee based on percentage instead of a fixed value. That way a corporation is hit just as hard (in theory). 

[WereCat]

2 hours ago, Trixanity said:

Easy way to fix that. Make the fee based on percentage instead of a fixed value. That way a corporation is hit just as hard (in theory). 

Percentage based on what? Your income? The claimed video value?

[Trixanity]

3 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Percentage based on what? Your income? The claimed video value?

I left the statement vague because it's hard to determine what it should be based on, but if you want to introduce fees, you'll be getting a bunch of experts finding a supposedly fair way of fining people/companies.

 

But yeah, I'd say income. If it was the video value, it could potentially backfire and still be in favor of companies unless one considers a clip like this used for commercial purposes on a scale such as in a Family Guy episode to increase the value of it for that particular use-case, then perhaps it could be done like that. So that the guy who uploaded it for fun and get a bit of ad-revenue (let's just say $2000 for arguments sake) or the corporation who uses the same clip on a TV show such as Family Guy (Dunno on this one, $200,000 or even $2,000,000). A percentage on that could make it more fair.

 

But it's a bit hard to argue the point as a layman. 

[GeekJump]

On 5/20/2016 at 7:03 PM, Trik'Stari said:

And then watch as Fox's legal team of premiere assholes get said uploader thrown in jail for "copyright fraud".

You wont get thrown in jail, when has a YT person gotten arrested for copyright claims? A stern finger wag and maybe a fine -worst case- but not arrest.

 

Plus, if we all do it they can't arrest up all!  *crazy eyes*

On 5/20/2016 at 7:19 PM, imreloadin said:

Unfortunately then they would just get penalized for making false DMCA claims because that part is only allowed to be ignored by big corporations....

Dummy a/cs?  

On 5/21/2016 at 2:24 PM, GreezyJeezy said:

that wont work considering on any streaming/video site if you try to upload a fox show it gets taken down before its even uploaded 

I didn't mean the full episodes - then you're in trouble - I mean those 15-45 sec clips that are always uploaded to YT. They survive for a few days before the take down. I think my old YT channel still has a FG clip from 2013 lol

[GreezyJeezy]

4 minutes ago, GeekJump said:

You wont get thrown in jail, when has a YT person gotten arrested for copyright claims? A stern finger wag and maybe a fine -worst case- but not arrest.

 

Plus, if we all do it they can't arrest up all!  *crazy eyes*

Dummy a/cs?  

I didn't mean the full episodes - then you're in trouble - I mean those 15-45 sec clips that are always uploaded to YT. They survive for a few days before the take down. I think my old YT channel still has a FG clip from 2013 lol

Even fox takes down ytp videos 

[GeekJump]

1 minute ago, GreezyJeezy said:

Even fox takes down ytp videos 

okay...you just want to kill my joke don't you? >_>''''

[GreezyJeezy]

1 minute ago, GeekJump said:

okay...you just want to kill my joke don't you? >_>''''

No I'm just saying how scummy fox is, yet they made my favorite show 

[GreezyJeezy]

Not made but you know what I mea, mike judge made it

[algoat]

Quote

UPDATE
MAY 20th, 2016 This footage of my playing was used in an episode of Family Guy that aired on Sunday May 14, 2016 without my knowledge or consent. I was subsequently hit with a copyright claim and the video was taken down by YouTube's Content ID system. After a few days the story broke across the internet and the video was restored on May 20th, 2016 without any of my doing thanks to FOX. All that i wanted was my own video back!

I have to say it is pretty exciting to make the front page of pretty much any tech news site and video game site! Namely Gamespot, Neogaf, Game Informer, Kotaku and so many more. The Internet riot by the gaming community and support was pretty awesome! I was also covered by a lot of popular YouTube gaming channels which is very cool to see since I watched and was fans of most of them already.

Thank you to any party/person involved that help get this resolved and thank you Family Guy for the exposure of such a small video! I also want to thank Seth McFarlane for tweeting about the issue and looking into it!.

 

Update from the original uploader 'sw1tched.'  His video is back up: